Enhancing ELT students' professional vision through early critical awareness-oriented content integration

The aim of the study is to explore the effect of critical pedagogical content integration through critical awareness raising content integration in Spoken English courses at Foreign Language Education Departments on students' vision of their profession. The study was conducted with the students who took the Spoken English I and II courses during the 2018-19 academic year in Foreign Language Education Department at Middle East Technical University, based on a qualitative research design. Students were interviewed individually and in focus groups twice throughout the academic year. Observation notes of the researcher were also used as a research tool for data collection. Almost all classroom performances of students were recorded for the researcher to keep her observation notes. The outcome of the study is that students' vision of their profession was more realistic having developed a deeper insight discussing multiple aspects of teaching English in contextualized tasks through critical awareness raising tasks throughout one academic year. It was observed that the participants developed an awareness of a more empowered teacher image sensitized to oppressed groups in educational settings. Keywords: critical pedagogical content, preservice teachers, critical thinking, professional vision, Socratic approach